This is a blog where brief information about developments in UK Co-op and mutual law will be reported. Readers of this blog will also find Linda Barlow's Co-operatives UK Blog at http://www.uk.coop/blogs/linda.barlow helpful. For an network of academics working on co-ops, mutuals and social enterprises visit http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/r-comuse/2012/09/welcome-to-r-comuse/

UK Co-operative Law Proposal of 1995 now Online

After the Thatcher Government abolished the UK's national Co-operative Development Agency in 1990,
some of the money from it was used to finance the UK Co-operative
Council. That was an apex co-operative body including the Co-operative
Union (consumer co-ops), ICOM (worker co-ops) and the main agricultural
co-op and housing co-op bodies. Co-operatives UK is now the equivalent body and, before developing as such, contracted to administer UKCC's affairs.

I was the co-ordinator of the UKCC Legal Working Group. The members were Charlie Cattell for ICOM (now part of Co-operatives UK), Roger Jones (then CWS Secretary) for the consumer movement and Michael Finch from NFU representing agricultural co-ops.

The
Proposal represented the fruit of many years' work by that group in
attempting to develop a modern Co-operative Law for the UK that would
accommodate and meet the needs of all the sectors. By 1997 it was turned
into a voluminous Parliamentary Bill which was presented to the
incoming Blair Government early in May 1997.